Beer garden in shipping containers opening in midtown

The new Bavarian-style outdoor beer garden housed in shipping containers will open next month at 24th and K streets in midtown Sacramento.

All the seating of Der Biergarten is outdoors, which could make the opening a bit damp during the rainy season.

Owner Sean Derfield had hoped to have it open in August, but it wasn't as simple as plopping down shipping containers on the site. The city required extensive permits. Der Biergarten’s kitchen, bar and other facilities are in the containers.

Der Biergarten’s sits on the former site of Pava’s Restaurant, which burned down more than 20 years ago. The lot is next to The Golden Bear restaurant and bar.

The menu looks like authentic German cuisine, with a lot of sausage dishes, pretzels, cucumber salad, potato pancakes and schnitzel. I didn’t see any currywurst on the menu, but that might just be a pre-opening oversight.

While the beer menu won’t have domestics like Bud, Coors or Pabst Blue Ribbon, it will have local and regional craft beers, and it has a menu of German beers such as Bitburger Pils from western Germany, Radeberger Pilsner from eastern Germany and Allgäuer Brauhaus beers from Bavaria in southern Germany. There will be 25 beers on tap.

Because it is an open-air operation, it has to shut down at 10 p.m. on weekends to keep the noise down in the neighborhood. It will open weekdays from 3 until 9 p.m., and it will be open from 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. on weekends.

German beer gardens take their tone from the beer and food stalls for picnics in the middle of the Englischer Garten, a 900-acre park in the middle of Munich.